digitaldust

I’ve just been musing over the idea of social capital again, a long journey starting with some talk today about messagesboards being old skool and all the YASNs being the nu thang.

Anyway, was just thinking about the fact that social capital is just what it says on the tin; Capital. In fact the term was coined by sociologists looking for a term to show the value of personal relationships. Hence social capital. Makes sense really.

As anyone knows in a free market capital begets capital. Even just having it in the bank gets you more. Social capital the same. If you have a lot of it, ie lots of friends then you get more easily. If you want to make your social capital work for you and collect friends then you can too. If you take a look at technorati the people at the top of the linked in stakes keep getting more without even working at it. And it would be an interesting study to see how people’s linkages grow on friendster, et al; see if the well connected keep getting better. Which I would expect to see, in line with Barabasi and all those other network researchers have proven. And the distribution of those links or friendships or that total social capital would be a power curve. An uneven distribution of wealth, just like in the real world with real money. There’s an awfully long tail, and most people are in that tail. But then life is tough aint it…?

Anyway here’s my pitch…

Where the BBC should be taking communities. Maybe we can make a real difference in the world around us. Can we provide a place for those who live in the tail of the curve? There are an awfully large number of lonely and sad people out there who are having a hard time working up their social capital and can we help them?

We have in our power the ability to hack around with the social space and provide an environment where it is less risky to gamble your social capital, easier to build up a social network, make some friends and engage with those around you.

We aren’t ever going to beat the power law distribution, but we can make the curve fatter. Effectively play with the social coefficient that powers the power law. Reduce it so that everyone gets a fairer deal, maybe not quite a fair and even deal but we can do our best.

This is no easy thing, and I’m not saying that there is a purely technological solution. It’s going to require a certain type of person in the beeb to do this, a type of person we don’t have many of. It’s also going to require some technology to support it, but I want to make sure that that doesn’t overshadow the people aspect.